Roadside bomb kills Saudi border guard near Yemen

By Ahmed al-Masri and Zakaria al-Kamaali

RIYADH

A border guard was killed in southwestern Saudi Arabia when his vehicle struck a roadside bomb near the Yemeni border, the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported Friday.

SPA quoted Interior Ministry spokesman Mansour al-Turki as saying that a water-carrying vehicle had struck a roadside bomb Thursday on a road running parallel to the kingdom’s border with Yemen in the Jizan area.

Al-Turki did not blame any particular group for the bomb, but in recent months Houthi militiamen are believed to have planted hundreds of landmines along the Saudi-Yemen border, especially in and around Najran and Jizan.

Yemen has been wracked by chaos since late 2014, when Shia Houthi rebels and their allies overran capital Sanaa and other parts of the country.

The conflict escalated in March of last year when Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies launched a major air campaign aimed at reversing Houthi military gains and supporting Yemen’s Saudi-backed government.

Nearly 7,000 people are believed to have been killed in the conflict -- more than half of them civilians -- while another three million are estimated to have been displaced by the fighting.